Pascal's impossibility

Ever since I failed, but not before trying, to sit in a room by myself for one hour without restlessness or anxiety, a cure prescribed by Blaise Pascal for all mankind's ills, I can't say I've tried it again.

Having written "Monsieur Ambivalence," a book that details the adventures of an American man who attempts to do as Pascal recommeded in a remote French village (available on Amazon and at Small Press Distribution), I now realize that the attempt was quixotic and, furthermore, that its author, Pascal, knew it to be destined for failure the moment he proposed it, maybe before. Still, in any spiritual pursuit one must try the thing on for for size to prove to oneself the thing does or doesn't fit, knowing the moment it fits the size will change.

The sheer impossibility of the spiritual is what makes it so seductive. You go in knowing you're going to fail, unless you're born again, but you try anyway. You try Christianity, Buddhism, drugs, golf, vodka, Alice Miller, literature, friendship, abstract art and you wind up wanting or needing nothing more than someone who calls you by your name first thing in the morning when you wake up.

Or, failing that, a nice person behind the counter at Peet's who knows by now you like black coffee and doesn't ask if you need "space" for cream.